We roll out changes to the site every day at 11 a.m. We stagger out small changes, so we can see what works and what doesn't. We chose that time because we want engineers around if there's an issue. Plus, it's early enough that there's not much traffic. Basically, everything that was finished the day before gets pushed the next morning. It could be a bug fix or a new language file-;say, a feature that was translated into French. Or it could be a new feature that's dark launched-;the public can't see it, but we have the ability to test it.
After we launch a new feature, I keep a close eye on how many people are using it. If it's unpopular, we'll discontinue it and try something else. Every feature has some maintenance cost, and having fewer features lets us focus on the ones we care about and make sure they work very well. For every new feature we add, we take an old one out. A lot of big sites don't do that, and it's a problem. Twitter started as a beautifully simple product, but it's now going the same route as Facebook. The drive to innovate can overencumber and destroy a product. My goal is to keep Tumblr very focused.
There's kind of a hive mentality at the office. We all break for lunch between 12 and 1. Usually, one person gets up, and the rest follow. We all cram into the elevator. Once we hit the street, we break off into two or three groups and go get food to bring back to the office. Then, we all eat together.
I always carry my camera with me. In January, I bought my dream camera, a Leica M9. It's the smallest digital camera they make with a full sensor. I post lots of photos on my blog, and I actually took most of the Tumblr employee photos.
I don't do much of the hiring anymore. Each department is in charge of hiring its own members. I like autonomous people. I want people who can take a project and figure out how to do it themselves. I don't really care about how things get done. Only that they get done.
Lately, I've been focused on our community outreach team-;it's responsible for figuring out how to connect with and promote the people who use Tumblr. I recently brought in my friend Richard Tong to be our fashion editor. He started Weardrobe, a fashion website that is now owned by Google. About 18 percent of our blogs are fashion related, and he focuses on reaching out to that demographic. As a result, Tumblr had a huge presence at New York's Fashion Week. I meet with the community team at least once a week to brainstorm about ways we can connect with users, like sponsoring a literary event or organizing meetups for Tumblr users around the world. I love that part of my job.
Usually around 3 p.m., I need a pick-me-up. A handful of us will pop out for tea at a place around the corner. I either order an iced tea or an Armenian mint tea. I used to drink coffee, but it messes me up-;I have a very fast metabolism, so I go from drowsy to unbearably hyper. Tea has just the right amount of caffeine.
In the afternoons, I usually want to bury my head in some project-;either screwing around with design or coding something. Recently, I took a stab at redesigning our photo sets feature, which lets users post several photos together, like a slide show. I may spend a couple of hours scraping together my thoughts before sending an idea out to the product team to get their take on it.
One or two nights a week, I usually work late-;until 8 or 9. When I do, I like to see who is still in the office and then take them out for dinner as a way to say thank you. We are surrounded by great restaurants, so we go somewhere nice.
I rarely work on weekends unless there's a serious database or infrastructure emergency. The company is growing fast, and we've had some problems scaling. Any time we add capacity, it immediately fills up. In December, the site was down for an entire day. It happened on a Sunday-;there was a whole lot of scrambling to figure out what broke. Everything about it sucked.
One of my favorite things to do on the weekend is take road trips. I just joined the Classic Car Club in Manhattan. You pay an annual fee, which gives you access to all these cool cars. My girlfriend and I took a 1996 Porsche 993 Carrera 4S up to Montreal one weekend. It was amazing. We've also taken trips to Boston and Maine. Other times, we'll jump on the Vespa and drive around the city. We might have brunch at our favorite place in the East Village, then pop over to see friends in Brooklyn before heading back up to Union Square to see a movie.
I spend a lot of time with people who work at Tumblr, but I make a very poor effort to hang out with other people in my life. I'm trying to do a better job of that. But, honestly, I love quiet nights at home. My girlfriend is a spectacular chef. She usually cooks dinner for us two or three nights out of the week. And then we wind down by watching TV. We use Apple TV to watch television shows from iTunes. We both love Futurama. I recently got her into Top Gear, a car show on the BBC.
Sleep is precious to me. I'm very disappointed if I don't go to bed before midnight. We have a rule: no laptops in the bedroom. Being on computers all the time makes me feel gross.
Check out Inc.'s Tumblr blog at incmagazine.tumblr.com.
